A recruiter contacted me, described the job, and gathered some information from me. Next, the hiring manager reached out. There were supposed to be three steps:

A quick coding challenge. A half-hour phone screening. A longer, several-hour interview that included both an interview and a coding portion.

I was given a link to a timed, one-hour coding challenge. I made a genuine mistake here by jumping into a language I hadn't used recently, instead of one I was more familiar with. I ran into some issues on the first problem and ran out of time. A few days later, I received an email stating they were not going to continue with my application.

I'm a bit torn on this because, on one hand, I should have chosen a language I had more recent experience with, and I can understand if they need a way to weed out applicants if they have a great number of them. At the same time, I don't think a one-hour challenge under pressure is a good indication of someone's programming skills.

What's important to you in company culture?